I started thinking about my first Ubuntu experience…8.04, Hardy Heron. Good stuff. I got curious and looked up the previous version names…and found them fairly interesting. Warty Warthog 4.10 Hoary Hedgehog 5.04 Breezy Badger 5.10 Dapper Drake 6.06 Edgy Eft 6.10 Feisty Fawn 7.04 Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 Hardy Heron 8.04 Intrepid Ibex 8.10 Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 Karmic Koala 9.10 Lucid Lynx 10.04 Maverick Meerkat 10.10 The trend is self-apparent. Now, the names are alphabetically similar, and in a descending order. Shitty sentence, yes, but too is this sentence shitty. The numbers correspond to the year of release, and month of release…meaning that the Meerkat drop that I have will remain beta for another 5 months. Nerd points.

Snow? In May? Give me a f*cking break, Mother Nature.

LED. Check Breadboard. Check Bunch of wires. Check. C++. Check. What is that under my finger? A BAD ASSED BUTTON! I’m going to have this robot up and rolling in no time. Everyone knows that every robot needs at least one button…the fricking kill switch. For, in case, said robot gains sentience and tries to kill the creator. And I’m not going down by robot death. Skin cancer, maybe, but no death by robot.

You know what? I’m pretty pumped I graduated when I did. Compared to my little sister, who is currently in the university system in Idaho, I paid practically nothing for my undergraduate degree. My mathematical science degree, for the win. Five grand does not go very far these days…and I’m fairly certain that five grand a year was enough to secure my degree. Beer and Doritos pushed that cost well over ten thousand a year, but I digress. Well, fear not. Technology to the rescue! Online courses were just coming to prevalence when I was wrapping up at Montana State. Granted, the foothold that was in place was primarily for continuing education, and for remote learning for secondary school teachers. Go figure. But, times change, and now there are crazy options in the field of online, higher education. Remember the University of Phoenix? Now they are simply one of many “Online Universities”, along with a grip of “Traditional Universities” offering online degrees. Per the title of this post, I found it interesting that the popularity contest in this field ranks as follows:

1. Business Degrees
2. Criminal Justice Degrees
3. Art & Design Degrees
4. Computer Science Degrees
5. Engineering Degrees

Invert the list (5 –> 1, for those unfamiliar with the term) to see the degrees I would pursue, in perfect order. Stick a “Chemical” in between the “5)” and “Engineering” to be completely specific. Anyhow, with the spread of online degrees and acceptance, per se, comes other benefits that were once enjoyed only by students of traditional schools. Like financial aid. This is the perfect opportunity to boost the resume, in a time of economic (and job) uncertainty such as this. Take a look…it is pretty slick.

Remember this from…say…25 years ago? I first played Mario on a black and white TV in my neighbor’s basement…I shit you not. Black. And. White. Here it is in color… Well, apparently it took a while, but somebody has finally notices this gem from Toad. Whatever. That may be cool, but by Super Mario 2, he was demoted back down to his worthless status. Remember his “ability?” Being able to lift things quickly? Joke is on you, dick.

Hot on the heels of Lucid LTS, Shuttleworth has just announced the next Ubuntu drop will be 10.10, Maverick Meerkat. Check Mark Shuttleworth’s Blog for the press release-ish details. Long story short, more emphasis on the netbook and the cloud…quicker boots, etc. Should be good times.

New Ubuntu is the best Ubuntu. You know what that means…Lucid Lynx is stable, and currently running on my primary machine. So far so good. Visually, Lynx is a bit more polished than Koala. Boot time was quicker…drivers working, etc. Even my Arduino front end fired up from the terminal…we are good in the hood. LTS…pretty damned stable for a beta, per se. Stay tuned…I still have Karmic on my old Dell, so perhaps I will fire them up side-by-side and write a review. Perhaps.

I’m not there yet, but let’s chalk this one up as a step towards the end goal…which would be the title of this post. A Damned Arduino Robot!

Granted, this is basically just my hello world (hola mundo) program with the addition of a solderlss breadboard into the fray. But, it is awesome and, I am going to be the coolest dude on the block when I come rolling out with a bad-ass robot. I had better get back to work.

I might have to move to Japan. First, they have that food thing down. Secondly, and more importantly, they are BUILDING A DAMN HUMANOID ROBOT TO GO TO AND RETURN FROM THE MOON BY 2015. That happens, and we have officially lost, my friends. FTA:

Looking largely to inspire dreams of space among the Japanese, a manufacturing cooperative named Astro-Technology SOHLA announced on April 27th that they are planning to create and send a two-legged humanoid robot to the moon, have it draw the Japanese flag on the surface, and then hopefully get it back to the Earth, all by the year 2015. Making inspirational ideas about space technology a reality is not new to the Osaka-based cooperative of six small and medium sized enterprises. SOHLA had previously built a small-scale satellite, named Maido-1, as a demonstration of the ability of SMEs to research and create short-term, low-cost space technology which could help improve local economic activity. Maido-1 was sent into orbit aboard a Japanese H-IIA rocket in January of 2009. Following that successful launch, the group asked people to start forgetting about the word “recession.” SOHLA believes that there is a growing passion in Japan about space technology and exploration with recent national successes, such as two Japanese astronauts meeting on the International Space Station for the first time. However, the group also feels that the ISS’ highly visible robotic arms not being Japanese-made is a real letdown for a nation well-known for its robotic technology prowess.

Robotic prowess indeed. First the Gundham statue, now this. Fuck you Washington…we need MORE federal funding for space science. It will take a lot more than some accelerator problems on imports to spin this story into oblivion. Come on…robotic astronauts…I am in awe.

Trying to spice things up around the breakfast table? Here is something new and interesting: breakfast burgers! Boy Howdy! Not only are these breakfast burgers nutricious and delicious, they are uber easy to make. Follow these easy steps:

1. Make two too many bacon turkey burgers for dinner
2. Place said bonus burgers in a Rubbermaid container (here, I went for a 1L with rounded square edges)
3. Bring to work
4. Open container
5. Eat breakfast burgers at work, in the morning

Note: breakfast burgers are best when enjoyed with multi-vitamin and coffee